I Am So Tired of Old Toxic Theatre Programs

by Drew Boudreau, Guest Editorial

I once had a Zoom session with a student to talk about her college audition at a particular school. She told me the primary sequence of events, but hesitation dragged her speech. She wasn’t sure what she could say to me.

She wasn’t embarrassed--she was affected by what happened, and it wasn't easy to tell.

The more I listened, the more I heard the whole story. And it wasn't pleasant.

Her audition for a well-known musical theatre BFA college sounded wretched. Sadly, it was not the first story I’d heard about this program with these themes.

The department instructed her to prepare to perform a song as a monologue. This is common in an acting class but admittedly unusual for an audition. While all songs are acting pieces, the mediums of singing versus speaking are vastly different and require time & energy to polish. I’m only mentioning this because she worked on this piece at length for this school alone.  Spoiler alert: they didn’t ask her to do it.

Instead, her adjudicator, the head of the program, asked her to sing & promptly stopped her and said aloud to the head of the vocal music program, “I think she’s flat.” The vocal music head replied that she sounded fine.

The adjudicator asked her to start again, quickly stopped her, and told her, “You’re not acting. There’s no acting here. You don’t know how to act.” My student, ever the trooper, let the head of the program tell her how bad her acting was over fifteen minutes. She would start the song & be stopped a measure in. Again. And again. And again.

And then *ding* time was up. My student didn’t get to do a monologue or show off her voice. So she asked a question.

“Would I be able to double major?”

The response was cold & indignant. “In all my years here, we’ve only had two students double major. If you want to make it, you need to sing every day. You need to dance every day.”

Colleges “breaking you down to build you back up” are the most ridiculous damn things. It’s cruel, and it benefits no one. Students’ passions are turned into weapons against them. They dread going to acting class. And they’re left with permanent insecurity about their performance quality, or worse yet, drop out altogether with a bitter taste for theatre.

Programs with egocentric professors also tend to be the most closed-minded about who should be doing theatre.

My student is of average build and stands under 5’5. She is also a proponent of BIPOC inclusion. Why is this important?

Because after the audition, in a talkback with potential students, this head-of-program fielded a question from an African-American student, who asked what the department is doing for BIPOC students.

What followed was an uncomfortable fifteen seconds of silence, half-sentences, umm’s, and finally, something about a masterclass with a Broadway performer of Asian descent.

As if to illustrate exactly where her priorities were, when the next tall, white, slender student asked a question, the head-of-program was delighted to answer their question and also knew this student’s name & life story.

Then my student told me the school asked for her weight. Twice.

And I lost it.

We have made many strides in normalizing all bodies in the audition room. And professional casting directors are starting to get it. (by the way, look up Lindsay Brooks: she is a fantastic casting director on a mission to normalize all people in all roles)

And it breaks my heart, which is filled with boiling blood, that some colleges still look for “a musical theatre type.” In this case, the type is “white, tall and lean.”

It’s time to stop patronizing these programs. They need to evolve or evaporate.

BFAs are everywhere. Young performers have limitless options to find beautiful programs that are striving for racial and gender equality, offer professional training AND value you as a human. Three programs come to mind immediately: Chico State, Texas State, and Carnegie Mellon.

It’s a buyer’s market. You have the leverage to choose where you want to spend four years and lots of money.

Be choosy. A school is lucky to have you, and if they don't appreciate that, girl, bye.